Wireless Handover with Application to Streaming over an IP Network

Abstract — Monitoring oil pipelines can be accomplished by Quadcopters equipped with video cameras flying alongside a pipeline. Backhaul of a video stream from the Quadcopter’s camera can be via a series of WiMAX base alongside the pipeline. This paper considers a significant problem that can arise, video service interruption as a handover occurs between WiMAX base-stations. The paper presents a hard handover recovery during video streaming to a remote monitoring station. The selective NACK scheme trades a reduced but acceptable video quality during handover for improved end to-end latencies compared to unselective NACKs. Both forms of NACK (selective and unselective) promise better video quality (by several dB) than with UDP transport or traditional congestion-controlled streaming, which results in long delays during handovers. Keywords—NACKs; Quadcopter; video streaming; wireless handover I